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The reason for my serendipitous return? One of the viewers of my "Clair de lune from Scratch" video lessons alerted me to the fact that Jim Parsons from "The Big Bang Theory" tv show has apparently been learning "Clair de lune" with the help of - you guessed it - my video lessons! How wild is that?

Here's a link to the G4TV interview - go to 5:10 to jump to the part where Jim talks about buying a piano and learning how to play after an 18 year hiatus from lessons:

Would you believe that I caught up with these lessons only 3 days ago? I knew that they ended at some point, but I followed them along 2 and a half years after they were made. I hit the end of the line and decided that I was going to stick with the piece, and learn the rest on my own. Imagine my surprise when only TWO DAYS LATER, there's a hint that it might be resumed! I'm really pretty excited about the whole thing.

It's one thing to follow a ghost thread and watch lessons that the majority saw over two years ago. It's quite another to be able to wait and watch and comment in the present!

Like with all great DVDs, I anxiously await the release of the Blu-Ray version of the Claire De Lune from scratch lesson series... You could probably pack all of the lessons into one B.R, disc... Remember, you do have eager customers! And this really is a impressive body of work. Great confidence builder for beginner players! This series is well worth any price.

Hugh's neat little copy/paste tricks had me intrigued - that isn't easy to do with .pdf files and I don't have (musicscore ?, I think that is what he uses).However I found Inkscape, which seems even more useful.http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscapeOpen source, runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.

Here is an excerpt from the readme;"Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar toIllustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalablevector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features includebasic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms,gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commonsmeta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path,and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript,JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-basedformats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source communitywith a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool."

It is easy to learn and from what I have seen so far such tasks as joining the last measure from one line to the first measure of the next line would be simple/quick/easy, though perhaps distracting in a video by the time you did all the ties, etc.

Hugh's neat little copy/paste tricks had me intrigued - that isn't easy to do with .pdf files and I don't have (musicscore ?, I think that is what he uses).However I found Inkscape, which seems even more useful.http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscapeOpen source, runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.

Here is an excerpt from the readme;"Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar toIllustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalablevector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features includebasic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms,gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commonsmeta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path,and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript,JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-basedformats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source communitywith a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool."

It is easy to learn and from what I have seen so far such tasks as joining the last measure from one line to the first measure of the next line would be simple/quick/easy, though perhaps distracting in a video by the time you did all the ties, etc.

In Windows Vista & Windows 7, you can use a neat free application called Snipping. That's what I was using to cut and paste portions of the music.

For Mac computers, you can use CMD+Shift+4 and it will pull up a little cross hairs on the screen - move the cross hairs then click & drag to create a screenshot box that will automatically save the captured picture to your desktop.

EDIT:In following a link to Hugh's web site I saw that these lessons are available on DVDs for ~$60, which seems more than fair.

Has anyone here bought those (I think we should) and do they go all the way to the end ?

I will probably buy them anyway a) to support Hugh's effort b) so I can run through them when away from this forum.:END EDIT

My apologies, the DVDs only go halfway through the piece - I haven't finished the rest of the lessons yet, I've had too much on my plate lately, but I do hope to revisit this someday. Thanks for your support and encouragement!

Well... I for one am hoping the rest of the lessons will be produced. I'm noticing the last message in here is from a year ago.. Anyway, on an interesting side note someone had brought up a question regarding Claire De Lune being appropriate for beginners.. While learning Claire I wanted to try to practice on a different piece. I wanted to begin learning "Comptine d'Un Autre Été". Oh boy! Did I learn something new! The Right Hand (RH) and Left Hand (LH)notes were very easy to locate and play on each hand, but were very challenging to actually play the RH and LH simultaneously. Claire De Lune is easy to get through in this respect because the LH & RH movements are fairly sequential throughout the piece. So definitely yes! Claire is actually a good choice for beginners. You can get through the 1st couple of pages of music before the page 3 challenge.... Anyway... Thank you again Hugh for the series... It's been extremely life changing. There is a very nice baby grand piano in the lobby of the Radisson Blu Resort & Marina on the island of St. Martin. I played Claire on it late one evening. Only a few people at the bar heard me play it, but I know they thoroughly enjoyed it because I didn't have to buy another drink for the rest of the night. It's moments just like those that I do cherish!